We had a very long, but hopeful, day at Cedars-Sinai. The neuroendocrine tumor specialist, Dr. Wolin, spent about three hours with us. We left feeling hopeful and so fortunate to have an expert like this relatively close. He was able to answer a lot of our questions. One of the biggest mysteries was why Scott's cancer was being called a "primary mediastinal neuroendocrine carcinoid." I couldn't figure out how that was different from thymic carcinoid. Well, it isn't different. It's the same thing. So now we have a more accurate name for Scott's cancer. It's thymic carcinoid. Hearing that made us both kind of freak out at the beginning of the visit, as that is the same diagnosis that Scott's brother, Bo, received eight years ago. Bo died from thymic carcinoid about 2 years ago.

But Dr. Wolin eased our worry. Wolin is so funny, so warm.  He believes that Scott stands a good chance at getting the cancer into remission and "keeping it there." Then he poked fun at Scott and told him to cheer up. "You don't have one foot in a grave and one foot on a banana peel," he said.

There are many treatment options, but here is the immediate plan:

We will do 3 days of chemo next week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) at Sharp, then we will go back up to Cedars-Sinai in mid-November for a repeat CT scan and MRI. We will have another appointment with Wolin at that time and will find out if the chemo has been effective at shrinking the tumor. (Wolin says that thymic carcinoid responds better to chemo than other carcinoids so that is good news, too). We will also meet with a cardio-throracic surgeon that week. Wolin briefly spoke to the surgeon when we were at his office and surgery actually seems like a REAL option. The surgeon is an expert on removing tumors from the lungs and chest. We were so happy to hear this news since cutting out as much of the tumor as possible increases chances at a good prognosis.